Francis Servain Mirkovic, a French-born Croat who has been working for the French Intelligence Services for fifteen years, is traveling by train fr...
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Jun 02, 2011
Chris
rated it: 
Énard is the spiral architect par excellence, conceiving and bringing forth something truly exceptional—an epic maelstrom of interiority, a narrative storm of bruising power, a breathless, beautiful, benumbing barrage of Mediterranean-mounted memories whose track-tied onrushing spans the tide-ticked sea of time—from the basest, the ugliest of materials: the limitless human capacity for violence, irrationality, depravity, savagery, and self-deception.
Conceits exist within the book's fra More...
Conceits exist within the book's fra More...
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May 10, 2011
Daniel
rated it:
This book is amazing. Enard's prose is hypnotic, insightful, and bold in its unconventional presentation. The story that he tells weaves together a vast amount of the history behind numerous wars (such as those in Yugoslavia, the Gaza strip, Algeria, etc) that have rolled across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa for centuries - all told through the voice of a man who is obsessed with these obsessive wars. In fact, if I had to describe this book in a few words, I would say this: it is obsessed
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Dec 05, 2011
Jeremy
rated it:
Zone is a remarkable book. The premise of the whole thing will seem like an almost eye-rolling cliche, a jaded intelligence operative is on a train from Milan to Rome to sell a handcuffed suitcase full of intelligence secrets before he leaves the spy business forever. That train ride is all that 'happens,' conventionally speaking. But the torrent of memories, historical facts, and nightmarish complicities that unfold in an unstoppable bum-rush from his head is as delerious and sweeping as almost
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(3 people liked it)
May 10, 2011
Mark
rated it: 
.................I enjoy a challenging read now and again and Zone certainly lives up to that - it is basically a one-night train trip where the narrator ruminates over his 40 years of terror, torture and treachery in the lands bordering the Mediterranean which have been the source of endless conflict in effect since the beginning of civilization, a meditation by a person who doesn't seem to have ever tried to change the course of history in any kind of positive manner until now, rather "go
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Jan 29, 2012
J.
rated it: 
* Jan 13, 2011 01:35pm
One sentence, 608 pages.
Translated from the french.
Looks like a love-it-or-hate-it if ever there was one.
à l'avant!
* Mar 03, 2011 10:51pm
Okay, page 119, lots of commas, lots of derivative history (20th cent EU history somehow always being mirrored by the greeks, and classicalism gone viral & rampant).. (Alright, the guy is a professor. Fine. I'm an electrician and I don't spend all day explaining ohm's law, do I ...)
Well, s More...
One sentence, 608 pages.
Translated from the french.
Looks like a love-it-or-hate-it if ever there was one.
à l'avant!
* Mar 03, 2011 10:51pm
Okay, page 119, lots of commas, lots of derivative history (20th cent EU history somehow always being mirrored by the greeks, and classicalism gone viral & rampant).. (Alright, the guy is a professor. Fine. I'm an electrician and I don't spend all day explaining ohm's law, do I ...)
Well, s More...
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(1 person liked it)
May 10, 2011
Mauro Javier
rated it:
Plenty of reviews have already hailed The Zone so I'll limit my hailment to what Brian Evenson said, in his introduction, about how surprisingly easy it is to follow Enard's sentences despite the abrupt changes, the lack of transition between events or thoughts or allusions besides a comma here, a comma there, which I love, and which I think (and perhaps this is a benefit of translating foreign writers that isn't highlighted often enough: the impact on local writers) will embolden one or two Ame
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May 10, 2011
obfuscations
rated it:
epic interior monologue explores psychological damage caused to a broken footsoldier-turned-spy by war and political violence ... stunning mosaic composition rich with historical and literary references ... harsh descriptions of the timeless criss-cross of atrocities across the bloodpan Mediterranean ... deep narrow focus no characters "develop" but the teller completely self-eviscerates ... may occupy your mind like a territory
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Aug 03, 2011
Neil
rated it:
What appears to be a gimmick, a one-sentence book, is anything but. You spend the book hurtling around Europe and the Middle East through atrocity after atrocity, while the narrator hurtles toward Rome on a train, not able to control his thoughts as he recounts the violence that has always been a part of living around the Mediterranean. Some of this is historical and some of this is personal for him, a former Croatian soldier with brutal memories from the War. It's a hypnotic reading experience
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Feb 11, 2012
Oscar
rated it: 
Lo que más llama la atención al empezar la novela es la manera en que está escrita, sin puntos, todo frases seguidas (excepto unos relatos que el protagonista lee en su viaje y que están insertados en el texto) donde tú, mientras lees, has de ir adivinando dónde se cortan las frases. Esta estructura no es ninguna novedad, autores como Bernhard o Saramago las utilizaban, pero en el caso de Mathias Enard la verdad es que se trata de un experimento algo fallido porque llegas a acabar agotado, y est
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Jan 22, 2011
Lisa
rated it: 
Reading a one-sentence book isn't easy but Zone is so interesting, with its accounts of world and personal history, that the book mesmerized me. The story is this: a man misses his plane so takes a train trip and thinks about the past, remembering his own experiences and relating them to the violent history of the Mediterranean basin. The book, which felt like a train ride to me with its stops and starts, is dense with historical and literary references. I found Zone rewarding for a casual readi
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Feb 28, 2011
Nuno
rated it:
Um livro espectacular, uma viagem de comboio pela Itália e ao mesmo mesmo tempo uma viagem ao interior da alma de Francis, francês de origem crota, combatente na guerra da ex-Jugoslávia e depois agente dos serviços secretos franceses cuja "Zona" de trabalho inicialmente na Argélia depressa se alastra a toda a bacia do mediterrâneo.
Para alêm de uma viagem introspectiva de Francis, este livro é um "resumo" dos conflitos que alastraram na Europa e próximo oriente do séc. X More...
Para alêm de uma viagem introspectiva de Francis, este livro é um "resumo" dos conflitos que alastraram na Europa e próximo oriente do séc. X More...
Aug 14, 2011
Mathieu
rated it:
500+ pages d'un flux de conscience continu, seulement interrompu par quelques chapitres d'un roman dans le roman, au gré des pensées d'un narrateur pris dans ses réminiscences des guerres, celle qu'il a faite mais aussi celles qu'il n'a pas faite, et hanté par les morts qui peuplent la Méditerranée.
Un roman qui s'inscrit dans un héritage ambitieux: Homère et Joyce, l'Iliade et Ulysses et qui est à la hauteur de son ambition.
Une fin que je ne suis pas sûr d'avoir compris mai More...
Un roman qui s'inscrit dans un héritage ambitieux: Homère et Joyce, l'Iliade et Ulysses et qui est à la hauteur de son ambition.
Une fin que je ne suis pas sûr d'avoir compris mai More...
Jul 11, 2011
Craig
rated it:
If you assume to have a true grasp of history (which is to say, a true grasp of mythology) then there's no way you should avoid reading this.
Jul 27, 2011
some called me pretentious. i responded by telling them I was reading a 500 page book comprised of one sentence.
Jun 09, 2011
I just spent a semester reading about the Mediterranean. So yes, I will be reading this.
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May 13, 2011
Mel
rated it:
It's not just one long sentence for the hell of it, so is the protaganist's life one long sentence. Very intersting way to explain the connectedness of it all - and by all, I mean the world.
Jan 09, 2012
David
rated it:
I have to work myself up to reading this more. Maybe starting a so-called twentieth century epic about a person's thoughts while on a train, when I was taking a train was too much. Stay tuned...
Apr 24, 2011
Lewis
rated it:
Despite prose that really drives this novel forward (and with it all being one sentence, why wouldn't it?) I ended up skipping around a lot, back and forth. The nonlinear nature of the story lent itself to that kind of reading. Then I'd get caught up in the relentless prose, and European history would start flying by.
It's a really intriguing work, and if history and modernist lit are your thing, this is the right book for you.
It's a really intriguing work, and if history and modernist lit are your thing, this is the right book for you.
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Sep 04, 2010
Agustina
rated it:
Hay muchos párrafos que no tienen comas ni puntos seguidos, y muchas páginas sin puntos apartes, esto lo hace muy muy interesante de leer, hay que retomar, exige bajarle a la velocidad de lectura, frenar en seco cuando la idea que empieza no concuerda con la anterior. Me encanta :)
May 10, 2011
Jonfaith
rated it:
Such recalls Umberto Eco's definition of a polymath, one that is interested in everything and nothing else. Enard's gripping novel punches the reader with the weight of nearly recoded history in its impact.
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Sep 08, 2011
Hilary
rated it:
Wrote about this here: http://kenyonreview.org/blog/?p=14619
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Jan 29, 2012
Alexis
rated it:
Not a single punctuation mark in the entire book. Cute at first, very quickly tiring. I stopped 20 pages in.
May 10, 2011
Kit
rated it:
Yeah, this novel is pretty awesome. It is long, though, and takes some time to get into the rhythm of.
Jan 29, 2012
Jan 29, 2012
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